Western Journalism

1
Western Journalism the Holodomor - Research
Update on

• Gareth Jones - A Man Who Knew Too Much
• www.garethjones.org

2
Walter Duranty
Moscow Correspondent for the New York Times
Unofficial American Ambassador to Moscow
3
Early Life

• Mother, Former Governess to Arthur Hughes family
  between 1889-92, founder of Hughesovka (now
  Donetsk).
• Father, Headmaster Barry County Grammar School.

4
Early Life

• Mother, Former Governess to John Hughes family
  between 1889-92, founder of Hughesovka (now
  Donetsk).
• Father, Headmaster Barry County Grammar School.
• Gareth, Born 1905 in Barry, South Wales.

5
Academic Career

• 1922-26 1st Class Honours Degree in French
  German from Aberystwyth University, Wales.
• 1926 Won Exhibition Scholarship to Trinity
  College, Cambridge.
• 1927, 1928 1929 - College Prizeman Plus
  Senior Scholar in 1928.
• 1929 1st Class Honours in German and Russian,
  with distinction in Oral Examinations.

6
1930-31 With Lloyd George

• In 1929, Wall Street Crash sparks off World
  Economic Depression Unemployment
• Gareth is introduced to Former Great World War
  One British Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
• Appointed Foreign Affairs Advisor to Elderly
  Lloyd George Jan 1st 1930.

7
1930-31 With Lloyd George

• Visits USSR for 1st time as the eyes the ears
  of the Lloyd George, but with an open mind
  about Communism in August 1930.
• Makes unescorted visit to Ukraine as pilgrimage
  to City, where his mother lived in the 1880s
• On Leaving USSR, Gareth writes candidly to his
  parents

8
1930 - Letter to ParentsThe winter is going
to be one of great suffering there and there is
starvation.  The government is the most brutal in
the world.  The peasants hate the Communists. 
9
1930 October -The London Times Two Russias
10
1931 Ivy Lee (PR), New York

• Head-hunted from Lloyd Georges Secretariat to
  work for worlds leading Public Realtions agency
  on Wall Street as their Soviet expert,
• Chaperoned 21-year old Jack Heinzs of Ketchup
  family fame on a month-long unescorted visit
  to USSR in August 1931.

11
1931 Experiences of Russia A Diary

• Gareth signed the Foreword
• With knowledge of Russia and the Russian
  language, it was possible to get off the beaten
  path, to talk with grimy workers and rough
  peasants, as well as such leaders as Lenins
  widow and Karl Radek editor of Pravda.
• We visited vast engineering projects and
  factories, slept on the bug-infested floors of
  peasants huts, shared black bread and cabbage
  soup with the villagers - in short, got into
  direct touch with the Russian people in their
  struggle for existence and were thus able to test
  their reactions to the Soviet Governments
  dramatic moves.

12
1931 Oct 14th The London Times THE REAL RUSSIA
 - 3 Articles
13
1932 - Oct 14th - Letter to Parents - London
Circles Knew of Raging Famine

• On Friday, I had exceptionally interesting talks
  with Prof. Jules Menken (LSE) a very well known
  economist.  He was appalled with the prospects
  what he had seen was the complete failure of
  Marxism.  He dreaded this winter, when he thought
  millions would die of hunger. 
• He had never seen such bungling such
  breakdowns.  What struck him was the unfairness
  the inequality.  He had seen hungry people one
  moment the next moment he had lunched with
  Soviet Commissars in the Kremlin with the best
  caviar, fish, game the most luxurious wines.

14
Planning a Trip to Expose the Soviet Famine

• Gareth immediately penned two articles for the
  Cardiff Western Mail published on Oct 15 17,
  1932 to highlight the tragic situation entitled
  Will there be Soup?
• In line with his Welsh Non-Conformist beliefs,
  Liberal Pacifist views Gareth decided to make
  a trip to view the conditions firsthand
  otherwise it could be officially denied.

15
Planning a Trip to Expose the Soviet Famine

• Gareth immediately penned two articles for the
  Cardiff Western Mail published on Oct 15 17,
  1932 to highlight the tragic situation entitled
  Will there be Soup?
• In line with his Welsh Non-Conformist beliefs,
  Liberal Pacifist views Gareth decided to make
  a trip to view the conditions firsthand
  otherwise it could be officially denied.
• On 23 February 1933, Gareth became the first
  foreign journalist to fly with Hitler, the newly
  appointed German Chancellor ( afterwards dining
  privately with Goebbels)
• He prophetically wrote in the Western Mail
• If this aeroplane should crash then the whole
  history of Europe would be changed. For a few
  feet away sits Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of
  Germany and leader of the most volcanic
  nationalist awakening which the world has seen.

16
1933 March 10th Gareth Packed a Rucksack Full
of Food from Moscow Torgsin Caught Local
Train to Ukraine.
Boy on train asking for bread.I dropped a small
piece on floor and put it in spittoon. Peasant
came and picked it up ate it.
17
Talked to all the people as I tramped
along the railway track. Ravens or crows (with
18
grey cap). White expanse of snow.Moscow
Sebastopol train rattled past with sleeping
wagon. Politdel party members, etc. Went
into village. There is no bread. Weve had no
bread for 2 months. Each dvor had one
or 2 cows. Now none. There are almost no oxen
left the horses have been dying off.
19
How can I live? I got a lb of bread
for all my family we came here for a short
time, there is no food here. My family is in
Kharkoff I dont know how theyll live.
Were all getting (swollen) nyx???i. In
this village 5 or 6 kulak families were sent away
to Siberia to cut wood in the Northern forests
20
In the Ukraine. A little later I crossed
the border from Greater Russia into the Ukraine.
Everywhere I talked to peasants who walked
past they all had the same story There
is no bread we havent had bread for 2 months
a lot are dying. The first village had no
more potatoes left and the store of ?????
(beetroot) was running out
21
They all said the cattle is dying.
(Nothing to feed.) ?????? ???????. We used to
feed the world now we are hungry. How can we sow
when we have few horses left? How will we be able
to work in the fields when we are weak from want
of food? Then I caught up
22
with a bearded peasant who was walking along .
His feet were covered with sacking. We started
talking. He spoke in Ukrainian Russian. I gave
him a lump of bread and of cheese. You
could not buy that anywhere for 20 rubles. There
just is no food. We walked along and
talked Before the war this was all gold. We had
horses and cows and pigs and chickens. Now we are
ruined. We are (the living dead) ???????. You see
that field. It was all gold, but now look at the
weeds. The weeds were peeping up over the snow.
Before the war we could have boots and meat
and butter. We were the richest
23
country in the world for grain.We fed the
world. Now they have taken all away from us.
Now people steal much more. Four days ago,
they stole my horse. Hooligans came. There thats
where I saw the tract of the horse. A
horse is better than a tractor. A tractor goes
and stops, but a horse goes all the time. A
tractor cannot give manure, but a horse can.
How can the spring sowing be good? There is
little
24
seed and the people are too weak. We are all
weak and hungry. The winter sowing was
bad, and the winter ploughing was also bad.
He took me along to his cottage. His daughter
and three young children. Two of the smaller
children were swollen. If you had come
before the Revolution we would have given you
chicken and eggs and milk and fine bread. Now we
have no bread in the house. They are killing
us. People are dying of hunger.
There was in the
25
hut, a spindle which the daughter showed me
how to make thread. The peasant showed me his
shirt, which was home-made and some of his
sacking which had been home-made. But the
Bolsheviks are crushing that. They want the
factory to make everything. The peasant
then ate some very thin soup with a scrap of
potato. No bread in house. The white
bread of Gareths they thought was wonderful.
26
Everybody on the track said the same
Lots of people dying. Only beetroot. Too weak
for spring sowing. One group There are
thousands of unemployed. Their bread card is
taken away and they have nothing. On April 1st
therell be another (???????ue) cut. Go
down to the Poltava district and there youll see
hundreds of cottages empty. In a village of 300
huts only about 100 will have people living in
them others have died or gone away, but most
have died.
27
Queues for bread. Erika from the German
Consulate and I walked along about a hundred
ragged pale people. Militiaman came out of shop
whose windows had been battered in and were
covered with wood and said There is no
bread today. Shouts from angry peasants also
there. But citizens, there is no bread.
How long here? I asked a man. Two
days.They would not go away but remained.
Sometimes cart came with bread waiting with
forlorn hope.
Kharkiv
28
Queues of 7000 stand. They begin queuing up
at 3-4 oclock in afternoon to get bread next
morning at 7. It is freezing. many degrees of
frost.
29
Gareth Held Berlin Press Conference where he
Exposes the Famine.First USA Newspaper reports
published same day on 29th March 1933.
30
First Famine Articles In Europe31st March 1933
London Evening Standard Famine Rules Russia
Ukraine1st April 1933 Berliner Tageblatt by
Paul Scheffer.Plus further Series of (20)
Articles by Gareth, himself in London Daily
Express, Financial News Cardiff Western Mail in
Early April 1933.
31
Personal Denigration of Gareth by Stalins
Apologist Walter Duranty 31/31933, New York
Times

• There is no actual starvation or deaths from
  starvation, but there is widespread mortality
  from diseases due to malnutrition.

32
On leaving the USSR - Personal Letter to Lloyd
George
33
1933-34, The Wilderness Year

• June 1934 Meets US Press Baron, Randolph Hearst
  at his Welsh Castle, St. Donats, Cardiff
  invited to meet again in St. Simeon, California.
• January 1st 1935 Personally commissioned to
  repeat 1933 famine observations for Hearst given
  carte blanche to write some of the most vitriolic
  attacks on the Stalinist regime whilst being
  equally heart-rending.

34
12, 13, 14th January 1935, New York American, Los
Angles Examiner Other Hearst Papers coins
phrase man-made famine.
35
1935 February The Thomas Walker Affair
36
1935 March The Thomas Walker Affair

• Marxist, Louis Fischer in a published open
  letter to Hearst in left-wing mag, The Nation,
  showed that
• Walkers photos were from different seasons.
• Some photos from 1921 famine.
• Not only were all Walkers photos articles
  bogus Even Walker, himself turned out to be a
  fake! But whose fake was he? Hearsts or
  Stalins? Hearst had a reputation for not
  allowing a good story get in the way of the
  facts, but consider this

37
1935 March to July The Thomas Walker Affair

• March 1935 Fischer letter also asked Hearst to
  provide facsimile of Walkers passport.
• June 1935 Walker deported from UK to USA.
• July 1935 Walker re-arrested under real name
  Green charged with passport fraud found to be
  a 14-year escaped convict for forgery from
  Colorado jail.
• July 1935 At trial, Walker claimed he had been
  expelled from USSR in 1930 for attempting to help
  Whiteguardsman escape country.

38
1935 13th March Louis Fischer The Thomas
Walker Affair

1. How did Fisher know Walker was travelling on a
   false passport, three months before his London
   arrest? Was he informed by the Soviets, who also
   supplied him with Walker's supposed 1934 USSR
   travel dates? And, who tipped off the British
   authorities?

39
1935 13th March Louis Fischer The Thomas
Walker Affair

1. How did Fisher know Walker was travelling on a
   false passport, three months before his London
   arrest? Was he informed by the Soviets, who also
   supplied him with Walker's supposed 1934 USSR
   travel dates? And, who tipped off the British
   authorities?
2. Would Walker dared to visit USSR again in 1934,
   after being expelled in 1930 for sake of 5 Hearst
   articles? Wasnt Journalism a bit of a risky
   public profession for an escaped convict? Was
   he perhaps hiding from US authorities in a
   Soviet Gulag, from where he was supplied with
   articles and photos, recruited to dupe Hearst?

40
1935 13th March Louis Fischer The Thomas
Walker Affair

• Fischers letter combined with Walkers
  subsequent (re)arrest effectively for half a
  century
• Destroyed the credibility of the Worldwide
  Conservative press allegations of any Soviet
  famine in the 1930s.

41
1935 13th March Louis Fischer The Thomas
Walker Affair

• Fischers letter combined with Walkers
  subsequent (re)arrest effectively for half a
  century
• Destroyed the complete credibility of the
  Worldwide Conservative press allegations of
  any Soviet famine in the 1930s.
• Furthermore, in 1933, when Gareth claimed
  millions were dying, Fischer then scoffed Who
  counted them? How could anyone march through a
  country count a million people?
• But in 1935, without ever mentioning Gareths
  name or even attacking his 1935 articles directly
  Gareths eyewitness observations of 1933 were
  not only tarnished by the same brush as Walkers,
  but were almost completely forgotten for nearly
  70 years, but not quite...

42
Gareth Investigates the Far East
43
Gareth Investigates the Far East

• German Company, Wostwag of Kalgan in North China,
  kindly supplied vehicle for to make an extended
  trip into Inner Mongolia to witness imminent
  Japanese territorial expansion.

44
Soviet Culpability?

1. Wostwag were covert branch of NKVD being de
   facto bankers arms dealers to Chinese
   Communist party.
2. US Intelligence Adam Purpis head of Wostwag
   was one of the shrewdest and cleverest men in
   the Far East and a known Chekist.
3. As for Dr Mueller, the British also had a 34-year
   dossier on the Communist associations.

45
Who Benefitted from Gareths Murder?

1. Japanese involvement claimed by Dr. Mueller
   resulting in no further territorial expansion of
   North China until 1937, allowing NKVD Wostwag to
   continue operations.
2. Gareth was loose cannon retribution by
   Foreign Commissar Litvinov?

46
Orwells Mr Jones The Farmer

• One man who didnt forget Gareth was George
  Orwell in Animal Farm, who based his Ukrainian
  famine chapter on Eugene Lyons book Assignment
  in Utopia, which he reviewed in 1938.
• Orwell wrote the human beings were inventing
  fresh lies about Animal Farm. Once again it was
  being put about that all the animals were dying
  of famine and disease .
• Remember Lyons Poor Gareth Jones must have been
  the most surprised human being alive when the
  facts he so painstakingly garnered from our
  mouths were snowed under by our denials.
• Orwell also parodied Walter Durantys famine
  denial of Theres No Starvation, but Diseases
  Due to Malnutrition
• Orwell wrote Nine Ukrainian hens had died of
  coccidiosis A disease specific to chickens

47
Gareth Jones A Man Who Knew Too Much

• On Friday 16th August, upon hearing of Gareths
  murder, Lloyd George commented in The London
  Evening Standard
• I was struck with horror when the news of poor
  Mr Gareth Jones was conveyed to me. I was uneasy
  about his fate from the moment I ascertained that
  when his companion, Dr Herbert Müller, was
  released he was detained

48
Gareth Jones A Man Who Knew Too Much

• That part of the world is a cauldron of
  conflicting intrigue and one or other interests
  concerned probably knew that Mr Gareth Jones knew
  too much of what was going on
• He had a passion for finding out what was
  happening in foreign lands wherever there was
  trouble, and in pursuit of his investigations he
  shrank from no risk.
• I had always been afraid that he would take one
  risk too many. Nothing escaped his observation,
  and he allowed no obstacle to turn from his
  course when he thought that there was some fact,
  which he could obtain.
• He had the almost unfailing knack of getting at
  things that mattered.

49
Gareth Jones In Conclusion

• Gareths diaries probably represent the only
  independent Western verification of Stalins
  Ukrainian famine-genocide.
• His Soviet articles were arguably the most
  accurate reporting of 5-year plan for which
  Soviets tried hard to suppress.
• With his murder, the only reliable western
  witness to the Holodomor had been silenced
• He was probably the only Welsh Victim of the
  Holodomor, but definitely a Man Who Knew Too
  Much.